Class 12 English Vistas Chapter 4 — The Enemy by Pearl S. Buck | ASSEB Question Answer
Welcome to HSLC Guru. This page presents a complete study guide for “The Enemy” by Pearl S. Buck, the fourth chapter of the Vistas supplementary reader prescribed for ASSEB (Assam State Board of Secondary Education) Class 12 / HS 2nd Year English. Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was an American novelist who became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1938). Having spent much of her early life in China, she wrote with deep insight about Asian cultures. Set in Japan during the Second World War, “The Enemy” tells the gripping story of Dr. Sadao Hoki, a Japanese surgeon who must choose between his duty to his country and his oath as a doctor when a wounded American prisoner of war washes up on the beach below his house. The narrative explores the eternal conflict between patriotism and humanity, between the head and the heart, and ultimately suggests that compassion can rise above the artificial barriers of nationality and race.
About the Author
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) was an American writer and novelist who is best known for her novel The Good Earth (1931), which depicted peasant life in rural China. She was the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries and spent most of her first forty years in China. Her bilingual upbringing and immersion in Chinese culture deeply shaped her literary vision. Pearl S. Buck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932 for The Good Earth and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938, becoming the first American woman to receive that honour. Her writing often explored cross-cultural understanding, the dignity of women, the struggles of ordinary people, and the futility of war. “The Enemy” reflects her humanitarian concerns and her belief that human compassion must transcend political and racial divisions, even in times of armed conflict.
Summary (English)
“The Enemy” is set in Japan during the Second World War. Dr. Sadao Hoki is a distinguished Japanese surgeon who lives in a beautiful low coastal house on the Japanese seashore — the same house in which he grew up under his strict, patriotic father. Sadao was sent to America at the age of twenty-two to study medicine and surgery, and he became one of the leading scientists in Japan, perfecting a discovery that would render wounds entirely clean. He was kept back from the front because the old General, who was undergoing treatment for a kidney condition, depended upon Sadao’s medical skill. Sadao is married to Hana, a fellow Japanese woman whom he had met as a student in America at the home of an American professor; the two had waited until both returned to Japan and were sure of their families’ approval before marrying.
One misty evening, as Sadao and Hana stand on the verandah of their seaside home, they notice something dark caught against the rocks of the cove below. They first imagine it is a fisherman, then a black floating log, but as the figure stirs they realise it is a man. Hurrying down to the beach, they discover a young white man, severely wounded, half-conscious, bleeding from a fresh gunshot wound at the back of his neck. The cap on his head is marked “U.S. Navy”, and Sadao identifies him as an American sailor, a prisoner of war who has clearly escaped from a Japanese vessel. The couple instantly recognise the danger: harbouring an enemy soldier in wartime Japan is treason, punishable by death. Their first thought is to put him back into the sea so that he may die at his own destiny. Yet Sadao, looking at the half-dead body, says quietly that “the best thing that we could do would be to put him back in the sea,” but since the man is wounded, his hands as a surgeon refuse to obey such an order. Hana shares his hesitation, and they decide to carry the man up to the house.
The three servants — the cook, the gardener, and the maid Yumi — protest violently when they learn that their master intends to harbour a white man, an enemy. The old gardener says the master ought not to heal what the gun had so kindly begun; the cook scolds Sadao for thinking himself superior because he was educated abroad; Yumi refuses to wash the white man’s body. The servants are openly fearful and disgusted. Hana, though full of sorrow at their disobedience, is forced to wash the wounded man with her own hands — a humiliating task for a Japanese lady of her standing — to prepare him for surgery. Sadao operates immediately upon the kitchen table, removing the bullet that had lodged near the kidney, and saves the young man’s life. The scars on the prisoner’s neck show that he has already been tortured, and Sadao becomes convinced that he is a young naval officer named Tom, scarcely more than seventeen years old.
Despite Sadao’s repeated assurance that the man will be handed over to the police as soon as he can walk, the servants fail to believe him and, after three days of grumbling, leave the house in a body. Their departure increases the burden upon Hana but also confirms her loyalty to her husband. As Tom slowly recovers, the family even begin to feel a kind of attachment to him; he asks Sadao not to give him up. Sadao, however, knows he cannot keep an American hidden indefinitely, and so he writes a letter to the old General reporting the entire matter. The General, who relies upon Sadao’s surgical hands for his own life, decides not to arrest him; he promises instead to send his private assassins at night to kill the prisoner secretly and to dispose of the body — a course that will save the General his doctor and save Sadao the personal guilt of execution. Sadao agrees and, for three nights, leaves the outer screen of Tom’s room open so that the assassins may enter quietly. But no one comes.
Realising that the General has forgotten his promise — for the General is selfish and self-absorbed, concerned only with his own kidney and his own comfort — Sadao decides to take the matter into his own hands. He gives Tom his own boat, stocks it with food, bottled water, two blankets and a flashlight, and tells the young American to row at sunset to a small uninhabited island off the coast. Sadao instructs Tom to signal twice with the flashlight if he runs short of food and once if he is well; if no signal at all comes, Sadao will assume that Tom has been picked up by a Korean fishing boat and has escaped safely. Tom, weeping with gratitude, accepts the plan and rows away into the sea. When Sadao at last reports the matter to the General, the old man, embarrassed, admits frankly that he had been too ill to remember anything but his own pain — proof, says the General, that he is “perfectly trustworthy” because he is so completely selfish that he would never betray a doctor he needs.
Standing on the verandah many nights later, Sadao watches the empty horizon and sees no signal. The American has gone. Sadao then asks himself a strange question — why, having had the man at his mercy, did he not simply kill him? He remembers the American girls he had known in his student days, their freckled faces, their loud voices, their kindness; he remembers his American professor and his wife who had given him shelter; and yet he had also remembered every insult of racial prejudice he had endured in the United States. Why, then, had he saved this enemy? He cannot understand his own heart. The story closes upon this unanswered question, leaving the reader to conclude that the higher law of humanity had silently overruled the lesser law of nationality, and that compassion for a fellow human being had triumphed over the artificial enmities created by war.
সাৰাংশ (Assamese Summary)
“The Enemy” শীৰ্ষক গল্পটো দ্বিতীয় বিশ্বযুদ্ধৰ সময়ৰ জাপানৰ পটভূমিত ৰচিত। মূল চৰিত্ৰ ডাক্তৰ ছাডাও হোকি এজন প্ৰখ্যাত জাপানী শল্য চিকিৎসক, যিয়ে আমেৰিকাত চিকিৎসা বিজ্ঞান অধ্যয়ন কৰি স্বদেশলৈ উভতি আহিছিল। তেওঁ সাগৰ-উপকূলত নিজৰ পিতৃ-গৃহত পত্নী হানাৰ সৈতে বাস কৰে। বুঢ়া জেনেৰেলৰ চিকিৎসাৰ বাবে তেওঁক যুদ্ধক্ষেত্ৰৰপৰা ৰখা হৈছিল।
এদিন গধূলি ছাডাও আৰু হানাই ঘৰৰ বাৰাণ্ডাৰপৰা সাগৰৰ পাৰত এজন আহত যুৱকক দেখা পায়। মুখত গুলীৰ আঘাত লৈ অজ্ঞান হৈ পৰি থকা সেই যুৱক এজন আমেৰিকান নৌসেনাৰ যুদ্ধবন্দী। শত্ৰু দেশৰ সৈনিকক আশ্ৰয় দিয়াটো জাপানৰ আইনত ৰাষ্ট্ৰদ্ৰোহিতা। দম্পতীয়ে প্ৰথমতে যুৱকক পুনৰ সাগৰত পেলাই দিয়াৰ কথা ভাবিলে, কিন্তু শল্য চিকিৎসকৰ ব্ৰত আৰু মানৱিকতাই ছাডাওক বাধা দিলে। তেওঁলোকে যুৱকক ঘৰৰ ভিতৰলৈ লৈ গৈ চিকিৎসা কৰিলে।
ঘৰৰ তিনিজন বনুৱা — পাচকজন, বুঢ়া মালী আৰু চাকৰাণী য়ুমিই ক্ৰোধত প্ৰতিবাদ কৰিলে। তেওঁলোকে শ্বেতাংগ শত্ৰুক সেৱা কৰিবলৈ অমান্যকৃত হৈ তিনি দিনৰ পিছত গৃহ ত্যাগ কৰিলে। হানাই নিজে যুৱকৰ গা ধুৱাই দিলে আৰু ছাডাওই ৰান্ধনিঘৰৰ মেজত শল্য চিকিৎসা কৰি গুলীটো উলিয়াই যুৱক টমৰ জীৱন ৰক্ষা কৰিলে।
সংকটৰপৰা ৰক্ষা পাবলৈ ছাডাওই বুঢ়া জেনেৰেলক চিঠি লিখি ঘটনাটো জনাইছিল। জেনেৰেলে কৈছিল যে তেওঁ গোপনে ভাড়াৱতীয়া হত্যাকাৰী পঠাই যুৱকজনক হত্যা কৰাব আৰু লাশ লুকুৱাব, যাতে ছাডাওৰ হাতত নিজে কোনো দাগ নলাগে। তিনি ৰাতি ছাডাওই কোঠাৰ পৰ্দা মেলি ৰাখিলে, কিন্তু কোনো হত্যাকাৰী নাহিল — কাৰণ আত্মকেন্দ্ৰিক জেনেৰেলে নিজৰ ৰোগৰ চিন্তাত প্ৰতিশ্ৰুতিৰ কথা পাহৰি গৈছিল।
অৱশেষত ছাডাওই নিজেই টমক পলায়ন কৰাবলৈ সিদ্ধান্ত ল’লে। তেওঁ টমক নিজৰ নাও, খাদ্য, পানী, কম্বল আৰু এটা টৰ্চ লাইট দি সাগৰৰ মাজৰ এটা নিৰ্জন দ্বীপলৈ পঠাই দিলে। কোৰিয়ান মাছমৰীয়াই তাক উদ্ধাৰ কৰিব বুলি আশা কৰি ছাডাওই বিদায় ল’লে। বহু দিনৰ পিছত আকাশত কোনো সংকেত-পোহৰ নেদেখি ছাডাওই বুজিলে যে টমে পলাবলৈ সক্ষম হৈছে।
গল্পৰ শেষত ছাডাও নিজকে সুধিলে — শত্ৰুকো কিয় তেওঁ প্ৰাণে ৰাখিলে? তেওঁ মনত পেলালে আমেৰিকাত পোৱা বৰ্ণবৈষম্যৰ অপমান, আৰু তথাপি ক্ষমা কৰি যুৱকক প্ৰাণদান দিলে। লেখিকা পাৰ্ল এছ. বাকে স্পষ্ট কৰি দিছে যে মানৱিকতা ৰাষ্ট্ৰীয়তাতকৈ ডাঙৰ — দয়া আৰু চিকিৎসা-ব্ৰতে যুদ্ধৰ ঘৃণাকো অতিক্ৰম কৰিব পাৰে।
Detailed Plot Summary
1. Setting and Background
The story opens at Dr. Sadao Hoki’s house, situated on a rocky bend overlooking the narrow beaches of the Japanese coast. The house is described in loving detail — low and square, set in a pine-shaded garden, with a path that winds down to the sea. Sadao remembers his childhood here under his strict father, who placed Sadao’s education above everything and sent him to America at twenty-two to learn the most advanced techniques of surgery. The Second World War is raging, and Sadao, now in his thirties, has been kept from active service because the old General relies upon his surgical skill.
2. Discovery of the Wounded Man
One foggy evening Sadao and Hana stand on the verandah of their seaside house. They notice a man emerging from the mists at the water’s edge, staggering and falling. Hurrying down, they find a young white man with a fresh gunshot wound below the right shoulder blade and another at the base of the neck. He is unconscious, soaked in blood, his cap marked “U.S. Navy”. Sadao recognises him as an American sailor — almost certainly an escaped prisoner of war. He and Hana realise immediately that taking the man inside means treason, while leaving him on the rocks means death.
3. The Moral Dilemma
Sadao struggles inwardly. As a Japanese, his patriotic duty demands that he hand the enemy over to the police; as a doctor, his Hippocratic obligation forbids him to let any man die when he can be saved. He recalls the racial humiliation he had faced as a student in America — his landlady’s contempt, the difficulty of finding lodgings — yet he cannot bring himself to abandon the wounded man. Hana, too, hesitates, but she trusts her husband’s judgement. Together they carry the American to a guest room.
4. Reaction of the Servants
The cook, the old gardener and the maid Yumi are horrified when they learn what their master has done. The gardener says the wound is the gun’s “kindness” and that the master ought not to heal it. The cook accuses Sadao of pride because he was educated abroad. Yumi refuses to bathe the white man. The three servants whisper among themselves and grumble for three days before walking out together. Their departure leaves Hana with all the household work and exposes the family to suspicion among the neighbours.
5. The Operation
Hana herself washes the unconscious sailor and helps Sadao prepare for surgery. Sadao discovers old scars on the man’s body, signs of earlier torture, and concludes that he is a recently escaped prisoner. He operates skilfully, removing the bullet from near the kidney. Hana, although she nearly faints from the smell of ether and the sight of blood, nevertheless administers the anaesthetic under Sadao’s direction. The operation succeeds; the young American begins to recover and gives his name as Tom.
6. Reporting to the General
Knowing he cannot hide an American indefinitely, Sadao reports the matter to the old General, who is also his patient. The General, anxious to retain his personal physician for an upcoming gallstone operation, promises to send his private assassins at night to kill the prisoner silently. Sadao agrees with great reluctance and leaves the outer screen of the sick-room open for three consecutive nights. No assassins arrive.
7. The Escape Plan
Realising that the General has forgotten, Sadao plans Tom’s escape himself. He gives Tom his own boat, two blankets, food, bottled water, and a flashlight. He instructs Tom to row to a small uninhabited island offshore and wait there until a Korean fishing boat passes. The flashlight is to signal Tom’s condition: two flashes if he runs short of supplies, one flash if he is well, no signal at all if he has been rescued. Tom expresses his gratitude and rows away at dusk.
8. The General’s Confession and the Closing Reflection
When Sadao finally calls upon the General, the old man, in pain from his kidney, sheepishly admits that he had been so absorbed in his own illness that he had simply forgotten his promise. He insists that this proves how “wholly trustworthy” he is — too selfish ever to betray Sadao. Sadao returns home, watches the empty horizon at night, and sees no signal: Tom has escaped. Then, gazing at the sea, Sadao asks himself a question to which he can find no answer — why, after all, did he save the face of his enemy?
Character Sketches
Dr. Sadao Hoki
Dr. Sadao Hoki is the protagonist of the story — a brilliant Japanese surgeon and scientist whose entire life has been shaped by two worlds. Trained as a young man in America, he has internalised the universal medical ethic that a doctor must save every patient irrespective of nation, race or creed. At the same time, he is a patriotic Japanese, the obedient son of a strict father, and the husband of a traditional Japanese wife. He embodies the central conflict of the story: the conflict between professional duty and national loyalty. When the wounded American is washed up before him, Sadao does not ignore his patriotic instinct, yet his doctor’s hands cannot let a fellow human being die. He is rational, courageous, calm under pressure, and ultimately humane. He is also clever — he uses the General’s selfish dependence on him to protect both himself and the prisoner. Sadao’s final reflection at the sea, when he asks himself why he could not kill the man, reveals a deeply thoughtful character whose humanity is greater than even he himself realises.
Hana
Hana is Sadao’s wife — gentle, loyal, and unexpectedly courageous. Educated alongside Sadao in America yet thoroughly Japanese in her values, she at first feels the same horror as the servants at the sight of the white enemy. But once she sees that her husband has decided to save the man, she stands by him without complaint. Hana washes the wounded sailor with her own hands when Yumi refuses, holds the ether cone during the operation though she nearly faints from the smell, and continues all the housework single-handed after the servants leave. She represents the ordinary woman whose compassion refuses to be silenced by wartime hatred. Her quiet sympathy gradually softens her own attitude towards Tom and helps the reader feel that humanity can survive even in a divided household.
Tom (the American Prisoner)
Tom is a young American sailor of about seventeen, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, who has escaped from a Japanese prison ship after being tortured. The deep scars on his neck testify to the cruelty he has endured. He is gravely wounded, terrified, and grateful. As he recovers, he speaks little, but his fear of being handed over to the Japanese police is plain. He becomes attached to the family and pleads with Sadao not to give him up. Tom represents the universal victim of war — innocent, frightened, dependent upon the kindness of strangers. His successful escape symbolises the triumph of humanity over hatred.
The Old General
The General is a powerful but completely self-absorbed military leader. Suffering from a kidney disorder, he depends entirely upon Sadao’s surgical skill, and this dependence governs his every decision. When Sadao reports the prisoner, the General does not arrest him; instead he promises to send private assassins so that no other surgeon will be needed in his place. Yet his own pain makes him forget his promise altogether. He is not loyal, not patriotic in any deep sense, not cruel in any heroic way — he is simply selfish. Pearl S. Buck uses him to satirise wartime authority, suggesting that even those who command armies often act from petty personal motives.
The Servants — Yumi, the Cook and the Old Gardener
The three servants represent the ordinary Japanese citizen of the time, soaked in nationalistic feeling and racial prejudice against the white man. The old gardener uses traditional fatalistic language: the gun’s bullet was a kindness, and to undo that kindness is to defy nature. The cook feels jealous of Sadao’s foreign education. Yumi refuses to wash the enemy’s body. They represent the very obstacles to humanity that Sadao must overcome. Their final exit from the house also makes the moral dilemma intensely private: Sadao and Hana must now face their decision alone.
Major Themes
| Theme | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Humanity vs. Nationalism | The central theme: Sadao must choose between his duty to Japan and his duty to humanity. His decision to save Tom suggests that human compassion is a higher law than political loyalty. |
| Professional Ethics (the Hippocratic Oath) | Sadao’s medical training compels him to save every life. His “trained hands” refuse to obey hatred. The story celebrates the universality of the doctor’s vocation. |
| The Moral Conflict of War | War reduces human beings to “enemies” and demands acts that contradict private conscience. Sadao’s struggle dramatises the inner conflict that war imposes upon ordinary people. |
| Racial Prejudice | Sadao recalls his own humiliation in America, and the servants display open racism toward the white man. The story exposes prejudice as universal but argues that it can be overcome. |
| Compassion and Forgiveness | Despite remembered insults, Sadao forgives the American race in the person of Tom. His final reflection reveals that compassion need not always be rationally explainable. |
| Selfishness of Authority | The old General’s behaviour suggests that those in power often act not from principle but from personal need. |
| Loyalty in Marriage | Hana’s quiet courage shows the strength of marital partnership: she stands by her husband even when it costs her her servants and risks her life. |
Understanding the Text (NCERT Textbook Questions)
Q1. There are moments in life when we have to make hard choices between our roles as private individuals and as citizens with a sense of national loyalty. Discuss with reference to the story you have just read.
Answer: The story “The Enemy” is built upon precisely this conflict. As a private individual and a doctor, Dr. Sadao Hoki has dedicated his life to the saving of lives; his professional ethic acknowledges no boundary of nation, colour or creed. As a Japanese citizen during the Second World War, however, he is bound by the law of his country to deliver every enemy soldier to the police. When the wounded American is washed up before his house, these two duties pull him in opposite directions. To return the man to the sea or to surrender him to the police would be the patriotic act; to operate upon him would be the human act. Sadao chooses the latter, but not without anguish. He reports the matter to the General, attempting to remain within the law, but when the law fails to act he himself arranges Tom’s escape. The story does not pretend that the choice is easy: Sadao loses his servants, endangers his family, and risks his own life. Yet the very fact that he makes the choice shows that, in extreme situations, the private conscience must sometimes overrule the public command. Pearl S. Buck suggests that genuine patriotism cannot demand the violation of fundamental human decency, and that a nation whose citizens lose their compassion has lost something far more precious than any war.
Q2. Dr. Sadao was compelled by his duty as a doctor to help the enemy soldier. What made Hana, his wife, sympathetic to him in the face of open defiance from the domestic staff?
Answer: Hana’s sympathy springs from several sources. In the first place, she is a loyal wife who recognises that her husband, a man of conscience, has taken a difficult decision and must not be left to bear the burden alone. Secondly, she shares with Sadao a foreign education, having met him in the United States, and so she has been exposed to ideas of universal human dignity. Thirdly, when the servants flatly refuse to wash or feed the wounded man, Hana realises that abandoning him will mean certain death — and her own womanly compassion will not allow this. She washes the man with her own hands, even though she has never before performed such a menial task. During the operation she nearly faints from the ether yet she does not leave her husband’s side. Hana does not stop fearing for her family or her country; she is afraid throughout. But her sympathy is the sympathy of a thoughtful human being who has seen suffering at close quarters and who refuses to add to it. Her quiet defiance of the servants’ prejudice is, in its own way, as heroic as her husband’s surgery.
Q3. How would you explain the reluctance of the soldier to leave the shelter of the doctor’s home even when he knew he couldn’t stay there without risk to the doctor and himself?
Answer: Tom’s reluctance is entirely understandable when one remembers what he has already endured. He has been a prisoner of war, tortured (the scars on his neck bear witness to it), and shot during his attempted escape. He has been washed half-dead onto a foreign shore. In Sadao’s house, for the first time in many weeks, he has experienced kindness — a clean bed, careful surgery, gentle nursing, food and water. Outside that house lies a country at war with his own, where capture means certain death. To leave such shelter, even in the knowledge that staying endangers his hosts, requires more courage than a wounded boy of seventeen can easily summon. Moreover, he has formed an unspoken bond with Sadao and Hana; he knows them as individuals now, not as enemies, and the prospect of being thrown back into the world of strangers terrifies him. His reluctance is not cowardice; it is the natural human craving for safety after long suffering, complicated by gratitude that makes him ashamed to risk his benefactors. In the end, however, he goes — and his going is itself a final act of courage and gratitude.
Q4. What explains the attitude of the General in the matter of the enemy soldier? Was it human consideration, lack of national loyalty, dereliction of duty, or simply self-absorption?
Answer: The General’s behaviour is best explained by simple self-absorption. He is neither tender-hearted nor especially patriotic; he is, above all, ill — suffering from a kidney complaint which only Sadao can treat. From the moment Sadao reports the prisoner, the General’s chief concern is not the security of Japan but the security of his own surgeon. He proposes to send his private assassins precisely because that arrangement saves Sadao for himself. When he forgets to send them, it is not from human kindness toward Tom — he has never seen Tom — and certainly not from any abstract loyalty either to country or to medical ethics. He has simply been too preoccupied with his own pain to remember the prisoner at all. He himself describes this as proof of his “trustworthiness”: he is too selfish ever to betray a doctor he needs. Pearl S. Buck uses this fine satirical stroke to suggest that those who hold great power often act not from principle but from petty personal calculation. There is no human consideration in the General’s attitude, no real national loyalty, and only an accidental dereliction of duty. The single dominant motive is self-absorption.
Q5. While hatred against a member of the enemy race is justifiable, especially during war time, what makes a human being rise above narrow prejudice?
Answer: Hatred for the enemy in wartime may be psychologically natural, but it is rarely justifiable in any deep moral sense, because hatred mistakes the abstract category for the concrete individual. What enables a human being to rise above such narrow prejudice is the encounter with the enemy as a person. When Sadao sees the boy on the rocks, the abstract “American” disappears and a wounded human being remains. Several other factors also help: a humane education that has taught the value of every life; a settled professional ethic, like the Hippocratic oath, that places duty to the patient above all other considerations; the example of a partner like Hana whose tenderness reinforces compassion; and the inner habit of conscience that questions inherited assumptions. Above all, the recognition that the so-called “enemy” suffers, fears and bleeds exactly as we do dissolves prejudice. Pearl S. Buck implies that prejudice is a disease of distance and abstraction; intimacy and conscience are its cure.
Q6. Do you think the doctor’s final solution to the problem was the best in the circumstances?
Answer: Yes — under the circumstances, Sadao’s final solution was both wise and humane. Outright surrender of Tom to the police would have meant immediate execution and would have sat heavily on Sadao’s conscience. Killing the prisoner himself would have violated everything for which he stood as a doctor. Hiding him indefinitely would sooner or later have endangered the entire household. By giving Tom his own boat, supplies and a flashlight, Sadao placed the prisoner’s fate in his own hands and minimised the risk to his family. He preserved his patriotic appearance — he had reported the matter, after all — yet ensured that the man he had healed would not be executed in his bed. The signal-system shows the surgeon’s habit of contingency planning. The solution is therefore practical, ethical and humane all at once. It is also the solution that allows Sadao to live afterward without remorse, even if he cannot fully explain to himself why he chose it.
Q7. Does the story remind you of “Birth” by A. J. Cronin that you read in Hornbill last year? What are the similarities?
Answer: Yes, the two stories share a striking moral kinship. Both place a doctor at the centre of a difficult situation that tests his commitment to his vocation. In “Birth”, Dr. Andrew Manson struggles to save a stillborn child and an exhausted mother and refuses to give up even when both seem lost; his persistence brings new life into the world. In “The Enemy”, Dr. Sadao Hoki refuses to let a wounded enemy die even though law and patriotism demand the opposite. Both stories celebrate the supremacy of the medical ethic — the obligation to save life — over every other consideration, whether fatigue, danger or political enmity. Both protagonists are quiet, modest, professional men who do extraordinary things by simply doing their duty. Both stories suggest that the doctor’s vocation is, at its highest, a form of moral heroism. The settings are entirely different — a Welsh mining village in one, wartime Japan in the other — but the underlying message is the same: the doctor saves life because the doctor must.
Talking about the Text
Q1. There are many instances in the story where Dr. Sadao’s loyalty to his country is questioned. Were the actions of Dr. Sadao right?
Answer: Dr. Sadao’s actions can certainly be defended on moral grounds. He never took up arms against Japan, never betrayed military secrets, never aided an enemy combatant in active service. What he did was prevent the death of one wounded man and arrange that man’s escape from a country whose laws would have executed him. As a doctor he was sworn to preserve life. As a thinking man he refused to allow propaganda to extinguish his conscience. To the narrow patriot, his actions amount to treason; to the broader humanist, they amount to the highest fidelity to a higher law. Pearl S. Buck plainly endorses the second view. The story argues that the citizen who preserves his humanity even in war serves his nation better in the long run than the one who surrenders it.
Q2. Do you think the title “The Enemy” is appropriate? Explain your views.
Answer: The title is brilliantly chosen because it works on several levels. On the surface, it refers to the wounded American — the official “enemy” of Japan in wartime. But as the story unfolds the title acquires several other meanings. The real enemy is no longer the man on the rocks; it is the prejudice that would have him killed without inquiry; it is the wartime hatred that convinces ordinary people like Yumi and the cook that an injured young man deserves to die; it is the fear that drives Sadao himself to consider returning the wounded man to the sea. By the close of the story, the “enemy” has dissolved into a fellow human being and the genuine enemies revealed are hatred, prejudice and indifference. The title therefore enacts the very moral journey of the story: what begins as a label for a person ends as a label for the inhuman attitudes from which the person needed protection.
Q3. Discuss the contrasting attitudes of Sadao and his servants towards the wounded American.
Answer: Sadao represents the educated, cosmopolitan Japanese whose foreign training has placed him in contact with universal medical and humanitarian values. He sees the wounded man not as an “American” but as a patient. The servants, by contrast, represent the uneducated, deeply patriotic and superstitious traditional Japanese. The old gardener treats the bullet’s work as the will of fate; the cook accuses Sadao of arrogance because of his foreign education; Yumi refuses to soil her hands on the white man. They see the wounded man only as “a white face” and “an enemy”. The contrast is also one of generation — Sadao and Hana belong to the new Japan that has looked outward, while the servants belong to the older, inward-looking Japan. Pearl S. Buck does not condemn the servants outright; she shows that their attitude is the natural product of their world. But she leaves the reader in no doubt that Sadao’s view is the morally higher one.
Working with Words
Q1. Look at the following words: fishermen, flock, swarm, shoal, herd, pack, litter. Match the collective nouns with the groups they describe.
| Collective Noun | Group |
|---|---|
| flock | of birds / sheep |
| swarm | of bees / insects |
| shoal | of fish |
| herd | of cattle / deer |
| pack | of wolves / dogs |
| litter | of puppies / kittens |
Q2. Find words from the text which mean the following:
| Meaning | Word from the Text |
|---|---|
| The act of operating on a patient | surgery / operation |
| A person held captive by the enemy in war | prisoner of war |
| The medical principle of doing no harm | (Hippocratic) oath |
| Showing strong dislike against a particular group | prejudice |
| Person who escapes secretly | fugitive |
| A person who kills another for political or money reasons | assassin |
| Substance used to make a patient unconscious | anaesthetic / ether |
| To shake or tremble with fear | shudder / quiver |
Q3. Use the following phrases in sentences of your own.
- To put oneself in someone’s shoes — Before judging Sadao, you must put yourself in his shoes and imagine the impossible choice he faced.
- A bolt from the blue — The arrival of the wounded American on the beach came like a bolt from the blue to Sadao and Hana.
- To turn a deaf ear — Sadao could not turn a deaf ear to the cries of a dying man, even an enemy.
- To take to one’s heels — When the servants realised that the master would not change his mind, they took to their heels and left the house.
- The point of no return — Once Sadao had performed the operation, he had reached the point of no return.
Additional Short Answer Questions (2-3 marks)
Q1. Where did Dr. Sadao live and why was the location important?
Answer: Dr. Sadao lived in his late father’s beautiful low square house, perched on a rocky bend overlooking the narrow beaches of the Japanese coast. The location is important because the sea brings the wounded American sailor right to his doorstep — without the secluded coastal setting, the central incident of the story could not have occurred. The remoteness of the house also makes it possible to hide the prisoner.
Q2. Why was Sadao not sent to the war front?
Answer: Sadao was not sent to the front for two reasons. First, he was a renowned surgeon and scientist whose research promised to make wound treatment far more effective. Second, the old General was undergoing treatment for a kidney complaint and refused to risk the loss of his personal physician.
Q3. What did Sadao and Hana first see on the beach?
Answer: Standing on the verandah of their house in the misty evening, Sadao and Hana first saw what looked like a black floating log near the rocks at the foot of the cliff. As they watched, the “log” stirred and rose unsteadily on its hands and knees, and they realised it was a man. Going down to the beach they discovered an unconscious young white man with a fresh bullet wound at the back of his neck.
Q4. How did Sadao identify the wounded man as an American sailor?
Answer: The unconscious man’s torn cap, still clinging to his head, bore the words “U.S. Navy”. His blond hair, blue eyes and white skin further confirmed his identity. Sadao concluded that he was an American sailor — almost certainly an escaped prisoner of war.
Q5. Why did the servants leave the house?
Answer: The servants — the cook, the gardener and Yumi — could not bear the disgrace of serving a household that sheltered an enemy. They considered Sadao’s act unpatriotic and feared that the police would punish them too if the matter was discovered. After three days of discontented muttering, all three left together.
Q6. What did the old gardener say about the wound?
Answer: The old gardener said that the gun had begun a kindness which the master ought not to undo. He believed that the white man was destined to die, and that to heal his wound was to defy fate. He considered Sadao’s medical compassion misplaced when applied to an enemy.
Q7. How did Hana help Sadao during the operation?
Answer: When Yumi refused to wash the wounded man, Hana herself bathed him to prepare him for surgery. During the operation she administered the ether anaesthetic under Sadao’s direction, fighting the nausea and dizziness caused by the smell. Without her help the operation could not have taken place.
Q8. Why did Sadao report the matter to the General?
Answer: Sadao knew he could not hide an American indefinitely without endangering himself, his family and his servants. By reporting the matter to the old General, his patient and patron, he sought to free himself of personal responsibility for the prisoner’s eventual fate while still saving him from immediate execution at the hands of the police.
Q9. What promise did the General make and why did he forget it?
Answer: The General promised to send his private assassins at night to kill the prisoner silently and dispose of the body. He forgot the promise because he was suffering acutely from his kidney ailment and was so absorbed in his own pain and treatment that he had no thought to spare for the prisoner. He himself later admitted that this was proof of how trustworthy his selfishness made him.
Q10. How did Sadao plan Tom’s escape?
Answer: Sadao gave Tom his own boat, two blankets, food, bottled water and a flashlight, and instructed him to row at sunset to a small uninhabited island offshore. Tom was to wait there until a Korean fishing boat passed and would signal his condition with the flashlight: two flashes if he ran short of food, one flash if he was well, no signal at all if he had been picked up.
Q11. What was Sadao’s final reflection at the end of the story?
Answer: Standing alone on the verandah at night, Sadao asked himself why, having had the enemy at his mercy, he had not killed him. He recalled the racial humiliation he had suffered in America and could find no rational answer. The story closes on the unanswered question, suggesting that compassion is a deeper instinct than reason.
Q12. Who was the General and what was his condition?
Answer: The General was an old, powerful Japanese military leader who suffered from a kidney complaint and was scheduled to undergo a serious operation. He depended absolutely on Sadao’s surgical skill, and this dependence shaped every decision he made about the wounded American.
Q13. Describe Hana’s first reaction to the wounded American.
Answer: Hana’s first reaction was one of horror. She was frightened by the sight of the bloodstained white man and by the realisation that her family could be branded traitors. Yet she did not lose her composure; once Sadao decided to take the man inside, she stood by him and did everything that was needed.
Q14. What were the scars on Tom’s body and what did they reveal?
Answer: Sadao noticed deep scars on Tom’s neck and back. They revealed that the young sailor had earlier been tortured by Japanese captors and had survived. The discovery softened Sadao’s heart and confirmed his decision to save the prisoner’s life.
Q15. How does Pearl S. Buck portray the Japanese society of the period?
Answer: Pearl S. Buck portrays Japanese society as deeply patriotic, hierarchical and suspicious of foreign influence. The servants embody traditional prejudice; the General embodies wartime authority; only the educated younger generation, represented by Sadao and Hana, can imagine a humanity larger than the nation. The portrait is balanced and sympathetic rather than hostile.
Long Answer Questions (5-8 marks)
Q1. Discuss in detail the moral conflict faced by Dr. Sadao Hoki and how he resolves it.
Answer: The entire structure of “The Enemy” rests upon the moral conflict experienced by Dr. Sadao Hoki. As a Japanese citizen during the Second World War, he is bound by the law of his land to surrender every enemy soldier to the police; failure to do so is treason punishable by death. As a doctor, however, he has taken the Hippocratic oath that obliges him to save every life in his power, irrespective of nationality. The wounded American sailor washed up on his doorstep brings these two duties into direct collision. Sadao’s first instinct is the patriotic one: he says to Hana that the best course is to put the man back in the sea. But the moment he kneels beside the unconscious body and sees the fresh bullet wound, his trained surgeon’s hands refuse to let the man die. He carries him home, operates upon him on the kitchen table, and saves his life. The conflict, however, does not end there. He attempts to satisfy his patriotic duty by reporting the matter to the General; when the General’s promise of secret execution comes to nothing, Sadao must decide whether to surrender the prisoner to the police or to help him escape. He chooses escape — providing his own boat, supplies and a flashlight — and in doing so resolves the conflict in favour of humanity. His resolution is neither cowardly nor reckless: he protects his country by reporting the matter, protects his family by ensuring the prisoner leaves, and protects his own conscience by refusing to be the agent of any man’s death. Pearl S. Buck suggests that this is the highest form of patriotism — a patriotism that does not extinguish the human in the patriot.
Q2. Examine the role of Hana in the story. How does she contribute to the resolution of the central conflict?
Answer: Hana’s role in the story is quietly indispensable. Although the narrative centres on Sadao’s moral struggle, none of his decisions could have been carried out without his wife’s loyalty and courage. From the first moment on the beach, Hana shares her husband’s hesitation but accepts his decision once it is taken. When Yumi refuses to wash the wounded American, Hana — a refined Japanese lady accustomed to having servants — bathes him with her own hands, an act that combines humility and compassion in equal measure. During the operation she fights nausea to administer the anaesthetic. After the servants leave she does all the housework, tends to the prisoner and continues to support her husband emotionally. Her sympathy for Tom grows gradually as she nurses him; by the end she too sees him as a young, frightened human being rather than as an enemy. In the resolution of the central conflict Hana is the silent partner whose acceptance enables Sadao to act. Without her loyalty he could not have hidden Tom; without her labour he could not have nursed him; without her steady human warmth he might have lost his own moral footing. Pearl S. Buck uses Hana to suggest that the conscience of one person is rarely strong enough alone — it requires the supportive conscience of a fellow human being to translate moral decision into deed.
Q3. “The Enemy” is as much about prejudice and its overcoming as it is about war. Discuss.
Answer: Pearl S. Buck does not write a war story in the conventional sense — there are no battles, no military movements, no patriotic speeches. What she writes is a study of prejudice, set against a wartime background in which prejudice is most easily justified. The story exposes prejudice on several levels. Sadao himself remembers the racial humiliations he suffered as a student in America: a contemptuous landlady, locked doors, refused service. The servants in his house display the mirror image of this prejudice: they regard the white man as inherently disgusting and undeserving of life. The General regards the American as an inconvenience to be removed without inquiry. Even Hana initially shares the household’s instinctive distaste. Against all this prejudice Pearl S. Buck sets the simple fact of the wounded body — bleeding, breathing, frightened, no different in its needs from any Japanese body. Sadao’s medical eye sees the body for what it is, and through that vision the prejudice begins to dissolve. By the end of the story the man on the rocks has acquired a name (Tom), a personal history (the scars), and a future (the boat to the island). What was an “enemy” has become a fellow human being. The overcoming of prejudice is therefore the deeper subject of the story, and Pearl S. Buck suggests that war is dangerous precisely because it provides prejudice with its most respectable disguise.
Q4. Critically analyse the character of the old General and his significance in the story.
Answer: The old General is one of Pearl S. Buck’s most economical creations. He appears in only a few scenes, but his characterisation is sharp and his significance considerable. He is a figure of immense official power: a senior commander of the Japanese military, capable of summoning private assassins with a word. Yet his daily existence is dominated by his weak kidney and the operation that hangs over him. This combination of public power and private weakness is the source of his moral character. He listens to Sadao’s report not as a Japanese commander concerned for national security but as a sick man concerned for his surgeon. His decision to send assassins is not a decision in patriotism; it is a measure to prevent any rival authority from arresting Sadao. His subsequent forgetfulness is not cruelty but pure self-absorption. When at last he confesses his lapse, he turns the confession itself into a sort of compliment to himself: he is so completely selfish, he says, that he can be relied upon never to betray a man he needs. The General is therefore a satirical figure. Through him Pearl S. Buck suggests that wartime authority is not always the heroic thing it appears to be, and that the great decisions of war are sometimes made for the smallest of personal reasons. He is also, ironically, the agent through which Tom is saved: had the General been more conscientious, Tom would certainly have died. His significance is thus deeply ironic — selfishness, in this single instance, becomes the unwilling instrument of mercy.
Q5. Comment upon the title “The Enemy”. Who, in your view, is the real enemy in the story?
Answer: The title operates on multiple levels and is therefore richly appropriate. At the literal level the enemy is the wounded American sailor, an officer of the navy of a country at war with Japan. The whole drama appears to centre on what should be done with this enemy. But as the story progresses the meaning of the word steadily expands. The “enemy” is also the prejudice in the servants’ minds; the indifference in the General’s heart; the wartime hatred that would have demanded the prisoner’s death without inquiry; the fear that almost made Sadao return the man to the sea. Each of these is, in its own way, a far greater threat to humanity than the helpless boy on the rocks. By the time Tom rows away into the night, the man labelled “enemy” has long ceased to be one — and the inner enemies, the prejudices and the indifference, have been at least partially overcome. The real enemy, Pearl S. Buck implies, is not the soldier of another nation but the inhuman attitude that lets us call any other human being our enemy. The title therefore carries the moral argument of the entire story.
Q6. Describe the operation scene. What does it reveal about Sadao and Hana?
Answer: The operation is one of the most dramatic scenes of the story. Sadao decides he must operate at once if the wounded man is to live. The kitchen table is cleared and covered with a sheet; Sadao sterilises his instruments with calm efficiency. Hana, now without servants, is asked to administer the ether anaesthetic, a task for which she has no training. She holds the cone over the patient’s face and almost faints from the smell, but follows her husband’s quiet instructions exactly. Sadao opens the wound below the right shoulder blade, traces the bullet’s path and removes it from a position dangerously close to the kidney. The patient survives. The scene reveals two things about the couple. About Sadao it reveals not only his great surgical skill but also his composure: in the most stressful conditions he is able to set aside fear of the law, fear of the servants, and personal feeling and concentrate entirely on his patient. About Hana it reveals an inner strength that her gentle exterior had not previously suggested: although she has never seen blood up close and is terrified of doing the wrong thing, she does not abandon her post. The scene is the moral as well as the physical heart of the story; through the simple act of operating together upon a wounded enemy, Sadao and Hana cross the line that separates the patriot from the human being and choose, irrevocably, to remain on the human side of it.
Q7. How does Pearl S. Buck handle the issue of racial prejudice through Sadao’s memories of America?
Answer: Throughout the story Pearl S. Buck weaves in Sadao’s memories of his student years in the United States, and these memories carry the burden of her treatment of racial prejudice. Sadao recalls the difficulty of finding lodgings; the stiff, contemptuous landlady who finally took him in only because she needed the rent; the small daily humiliations of being looked upon as different. These memories are not bitter, but they are vivid, and they would have given Sadao every excuse to harden his heart against the wounded American. Instead Pearl S. Buck uses them in the opposite direction. Precisely because Sadao knows what prejudice feels like, he refuses to inflict it upon another. The young man on the kitchen table is not the landlady or the unfriendly classmate; he is a wounded boy, no more responsible for the racism Sadao endured than Sadao himself was for the cruelty of Japanese soldiers in occupied countries. The memories therefore serve a complex moral function: they remind the reader that prejudice cuts both ways, that no nation is innocent of it, and that the cure lies not in returning prejudice for prejudice but in refusing to let one’s own suffering become the licence for another’s.
Q8. Discuss the ending of the story. What does Sadao’s unanswered question signify?
Answer: The story ends in a strikingly understated way. Tom has rowed safely to the island, no signal-light has appeared, and Sadao knows that the American has been picked up by a Korean fishing boat. He stands alone on the verandah of his house and gazes out at the empty horizon. Then comes the question that closes the story: why, having had the man at his mercy, did he not kill him? He cannot answer. He thinks of the racial insults he had received in America; he thinks of the kindly American professor and his wife who had given him shelter; he thinks of Hana and the operation; and still no satisfactory answer comes. The unanswered question signifies several things. It signifies that the deepest moral acts are sometimes performed at a level below conscious reason. It signifies that compassion, when it is genuine, does not always know its own grounds. It signifies that human beings can rise above prejudice without being able fully to explain how. And finally it signifies the modesty of Pearl S. Buck’s moral vision: she does not give Sadao a great speech about the brotherhood of man; she simply leaves him with a question that the reader must finish for him. The very inability to answer becomes the most eloquent statement the story can make about the supremacy of humanity over hatred.
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
1. Who is the author of “The Enemy”?
A) Jack Finney B) Pearl S. Buck C) Tishani Doshi D) A. J. Cronin
Answer: B) Pearl S. Buck
2. Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in —
A) 1932 B) 1934 C) 1938 D) 1945
Answer: C) 1938
3. The story “The Enemy” is set in —
A) the First World War B) the Second World War C) the Korean War D) the Vietnam War
Answer: B) the Second World War
4. Dr. Sadao Hoki is by profession —
A) a physician B) a dentist C) a surgeon D) a soldier
Answer: C) a surgeon
5. Sadao went to America at the age of —
A) eighteen B) twenty C) twenty-two D) twenty-five
Answer: C) twenty-two
6. Sadao’s house was located —
A) in Tokyo B) on a rocky bend overlooking the sea C) in the mountains D) on an island
Answer: B) on a rocky bend overlooking the sea
7. Sadao was kept back from the front because —
A) he was too old B) he was a coward C) the General needed his medical skill D) he refused to fight
Answer: C) the General needed his medical skill
8. Sadao first met Hana —
A) in Tokyo B) at the home of an American professor C) at a hospital D) at a tea ceremony
Answer: B) at the home of an American professor
9. The wounded man washed up on the beach was —
A) a Japanese fisherman B) a Korean sailor C) an American prisoner of war D) a British spy
Answer: C) an American prisoner of war
10. Sadao identified the wounded man’s nationality from —
A) his face B) his uniform C) the cap marked “U.S. Navy” D) his speech
Answer: C) the cap marked “U.S. Navy”
11. The wounded American’s first name was —
A) Tim B) Tom C) Bill D) Jack
Answer: B) Tom
12. The names of Sadao’s three servants are —
A) the cook, the gardener and Yumi B) Hana, Yumi and Tom C) the cook, the maid and the driver D) Yumi, Hana and the gardener
Answer: A) the cook, the gardener and Yumi
13. Yumi refused to —
A) cook for the white man B) wash the white man C) speak to him D) leave the house
Answer: B) wash the white man
14. The old gardener said the bullet was —
A) a curse B) a kindness that should not be undone C) too small to hurt D) a sign of God’s mercy
Answer: B) a kindness that should not be undone
15. After how many days did the servants leave the house?
A) one B) two C) three D) seven
Answer: C) three
16. Hana administered the anaesthetic during the operation; the anaesthetic was —
A) chloroform B) ether C) morphine D) nitrous oxide
Answer: B) ether
17. The General suffered from a —
A) heart disease B) lung disease C) kidney disorder / gallstone problem D) skin disease
Answer: C) kidney disorder / gallstone problem
18. The General promised to send —
A) policemen B) soldiers C) private assassins D) doctors
Answer: C) private assassins
19. For how many nights did Sadao keep the screen of Tom’s room open?
A) one B) two C) three D) seven
Answer: C) three
20. Why did the assassins not come?
A) the General was honourable B) the General had forgotten C) Sadao bribed them D) Tom escaped first
Answer: B) the General had forgotten
21. Sadao gave Tom a — to escape.
A) car B) horse C) boat D) plane
Answer: C) boat
22. Sadao instructed Tom to signal his condition with —
A) a flag B) a flashlight C) a horn D) a smoke pillar
Answer: B) a flashlight
23. According to the signal-system, two flashes meant —
A) all is well B) need food C) am dying D) am rescued
Answer: B) need food
24. Sadao expected Tom to be picked up by a —
A) Japanese ship B) Russian submarine C) Korean fishing boat D) American destroyer
Answer: C) Korean fishing boat
25. The General described his own self-absorption as proof of his —
A) cowardice B) trustworthiness C) cruelty D) wisdom
Answer: B) trustworthiness
26. The scars on Tom’s neck and back were the result of —
A) a fall B) earlier torture C) a knife fight D) burns
Answer: B) earlier torture
27. The central conflict of the story is between —
A) father and son B) husband and wife C) patriotism and humanity D) science and religion
Answer: C) patriotism and humanity
28. The author of “The Enemy” was the first American woman to win —
A) the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction B) the Nobel Prize in Literature C) the Booker Prize D) the Hugo Award
Answer: B) the Nobel Prize in Literature
Extract-Based Questions
Extract 1: “On the beach at last beyond the sands of the cove he stood, a man — a man who had been broken on the wheel of war, broken so that the very sea had cast him out. The two of them, the doctor and his wife, looked at each other strangely.”
(i) Who are “the two” in this passage?
Answer: The two are Dr. Sadao Hoki and his wife Hana, who have come down to the beach to investigate the figure they had seen from their verandah.
(ii) Why did they look at each other “strangely”?
Answer: They looked at each other strangely because they had instantly recognised the wounded man as a white American sailor — an enemy in wartime — and realised the danger of the situation. Their look conveyed shock, fear and the unspoken question: what should they do now?
(iii) What does the phrase “broken on the wheel of war” mean?
Answer: The phrase means crushed, mangled, or destroyed by the violence of war. It alludes to the medieval torture device known as the wheel and is used metaphorically to suggest that the man has been beaten down by the brutality of armed conflict.
Extract 2: “‘The best thing that we could do,’ said Sadao slowly, ‘would be to put him back into the sea.’ But neither of them moved. ‘If we sheltered a white man in our house we should be arrested and if we turned him over as a prisoner, he would certainly die,’ Sadao said.”
(i) What is the dilemma Sadao faces in this passage?
Answer: Sadao faces a stark dilemma: leaving the wounded American on the beach or returning him to the sea is the safest course for himself but means certain death for the man; sheltering him is treason; handing him to the police means execution.
(ii) Why does Sadao hesitate to “put him back in the sea”?
Answer: Sadao hesitates because his medical training and human compassion will not allow him to be the cause of another man’s death. Although the patriotic course is to abandon the man, his trained hands as a surgeon refuse to obey such an order.
(iii) What does the passage tell us about Sadao’s character?
Answer: The passage shows Sadao as a thoughtful, conflicted but ultimately humane man. He weighs both options aloud and is honest about the risks; yet his immobility — “neither of them moved” — already foreshadows his choice in favour of compassion.
Extract 3: “‘But the master ought not heal the wound of this white man,’ the old gardener said. ‘The white man ought to die. First he was shot. Then the sea caught him and wounded him with her rocks. If the master heals what the gun did and what the sea did, they will take revenge on us.'”
(i) Who is speaking and to whom?
Answer: The old gardener is speaking to Hana, expressing his disapproval of his master’s decision to save the wounded American.
(ii) What is the gardener’s superstition?
Answer: The gardener believes that the gun’s bullet and the sea’s rocks together represent the will of fate, and that to undo their work by healing the wound is to defy fate. He fears that nature itself will take revenge upon the household.
(iii) What does this passage reveal about the social atmosphere in wartime Japan?
Answer: The passage reveals an atmosphere of intense xenophobia and superstition. Ordinary citizens like the gardener viewed the white enemy as inherently undeserving of compassion, and even the act of healing was seen as a betrayal of country and fate alike.
Extract 4: “‘Tomorrow,’ Sadao promised, ‘tomorrow you must go.'”
(i) Whom is Sadao addressing?
Answer: Sadao is addressing Tom, the young American sailor he has nursed back to health.
(ii) Why must Tom leave the next day?
Answer: Tom must leave because the General has failed to send the assassins, the servants are no longer in the house, and Sadao cannot continue to hide an American indefinitely without endangering himself, his wife and the prisoner. Sadao has now arranged the boat and the supplies for Tom’s escape.
(iii) What is Sadao’s plan for Tom’s escape?
Answer: Sadao plans to give Tom his own boat with food, water, two blankets and a flashlight. Tom is to row to a small uninhabited island offshore and wait there to be picked up by a passing Korean fishing boat. He is to use the flashlight to signal his condition.
Extract 5: “He stood for a moment looking out over the water. The man was gone. The flickering light he had hung at the edge of the garden was still burning. He took it down carefully and turned to the house. ‘Strange,’ he thought, ‘that I should have saved him.'”
(i) Who is “he” and what is “the flickering light”?
Answer: “He” is Dr. Sadao Hoki. “The flickering light” is the lantern Sadao had hung in the garden so that Tom could find his way to the boat at sunset; it has now served its purpose and is to be taken down.
(ii) Why does Sadao find his action “strange”?
Answer: Sadao finds his action strange because he cannot rationally account for it. The man whom he has saved was an enemy of his country, a member of a race that had once humiliated him in America. By every reasonable standard he should have been glad to see the man die. The fact that he instead risked everything to save him puzzles him.
(iii) What does the closing reflection signify?
Answer: The closing reflection signifies that the deepest acts of compassion need not always be rationally explainable, and that humanity in its purest form rises spontaneously above hatred and prejudice. Sadao’s “strange” feeling is in fact the proof of his humanity.
Conclusion
“The Enemy” by Pearl S. Buck is one of the most thought-provoking stories in the ASSEB Class 12 English Vistas reader. Through the moral journey of Dr. Sadao Hoki and his wife Hana, the author explores the eternal tension between patriotism and humanity, between professional duty and political loyalty, between learnt prejudice and innate compassion. The story does not preach; it simply places its characters in an impossible situation and lets the reader watch their choices unfold. Its closing question — why did Sadao spare the enemy? — is a question every reader must finally answer for himself or herself. Pearl S. Buck’s quiet, controlled prose reminds us that, even in the darkest hour of war, the humanity of one doctor and one wife can prove stronger than the hatred of an entire nation.